The Normans in European history

From the British Isles south to Sicily and the Holy Land, Norman influence was felt throughout Europe during the early Middle Ages. In this, his first full-length book, Harvard Dean Charles Homer Haskins lauds the organizational skills of the Normans. Starting with Rollo the Viking and continuing through the reign of Henry I, Haskins shows the influence of the bureaucratic methods they developed for the management of church, military and financial institutions throughout early Europe. Haskins argues that these talents made the Normans instrumental to the development of the modern nation-state.